Trump defends NFL stance at GOP donor dinner

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his view that the National Football League should require athletes to stand for the national anthem.

At a fundraiser for his reelection campaign in midtown Manhattan, the president delivered wide-ranging remarks that veered, over the course of about 40 minutes, from professional sports to foreign policy and healthcare, promising that although GOP congressional leaders abandoned a plan to roll back Obamacare earlier in the day, the party would take up the effort again in the new year.

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The president’s feud with the NFL shows no signs of abating. “They have a rule, you can’t dance in the end zone, you can’t wear pink socks, one guy’s mother had breast cancer and they wouldn’t let him, you can’t do anything! But you’re allowed to sit down for the national anthem,” Trump said, according to an attendee.

Addressing about 150 of the Republican Party’s wealthiest donors at the Manhattan restaurant Le Cirque, he lambasted NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who became the subject of controversy last summer when he kneeled during the national anthem to draw attention, he said, to police mistreatment of African Americans.

“All Goodell had to do was say there’s rules and you can’t do it, suspend him for a couple games, you would never have had this,” Trump went on. “Now you have this whole thing going and it’s a very dangerous thing ‘cause we cannot let anyone disrespect our country like that.”

His remarks were the extension of what has become a days-long standoff between the president and professional athletes that began on Friday, when the president urged NFL owners to fire players who refuse to stand for the anthem before games.

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Tickets to the dinner sold for between $35,000 and $250,000 a couple. The event brought together some of the president’s most ardent supporters as well as longtime Republican Party stalwarts, including Marc Kasowitz, who until recently served as the president’s personal attorney; Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn; the New York real estate magnate Howard Lorber; RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel; and the president’s older sons Donald Jr. and Eric.

“They’ve been so helpful, they’ve done everything great,” the president told the audience. “It’s hard for them, but don’t feel bad for them.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he would not hold a vote on the latest Obamacare repeal effort, but the president told donors that he was not giving up on rolling back the entitlement program. “We’ll be doing it after the beginning of the year,” he said. “We never give up, we never ever give up, we’re going to repeal and replace.”

But he also raised another prospect before the Republican crowd: “Maybe I’ll make a deal with the Democrats. They’re calling me like crazy. Can we make a deal? Can we make a deal?”

Trump earlier this month shocked McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan by striking a bargain with their Democratic counterparts, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, to extend the debt ceiling.

And he lavished praise on Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis after asking the crowd whether they approved of the Marine general. “They guy never loses a battle, never loses,” he said. “Winning record.”

The fundraiser was the first the president or any of his children have attended since reports emerged last week that the RNC has paid over $200,000 to attorneys representing him and Donald Jr. in the array of Russia-related investigations.

It adjourned shortly before the results of the Republican Senate primary in Alabama were announced. The president on Friday traveled to the state to campaign for Sen. Luther Strange, who was defeated on Tuesday by Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court – a candidate backed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Though the results were not yet clear during the president’s remarks, he conceded it had been a tough race for Strange.

Trump later tweeted: “Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy, WIN in Nov!”

Trump also used his remarks to defend his decision to increase the American troop presence in Afghanistan, explaining – as he did during a speech to the nation in late August – that the world looks different from behind the desk in the Oval Office.

“When generals are showing me things that you will never be allowed to see, and how evil it is, how bad it is, I said we’re going to stay and we’re going to knock the shit out of them, we really have no choice,” he said.